I think we have inherited a similar situation to the late 1930s.
Replace the term 'stealth strike fighter' with the term 'turreted fighter' and you can see a few parallels between the F-35 and Boulton Paul Defiant. Of course the performance of these two aircraft is not quite up to their contemporaries but this is more than made up for by other features.
Knockers of the F-35 could well do to look back at history.
RAF Defiants battered the Luftwaffe in the early summer of 1940
And that continued for pretty much most of the first week!